The Dark
by Tolakasa
Summary: AU, future. He'll never see his daughter's eyes. Mention of character death.


**The Dark**

He's never seen his daughter's eyes. Cassie says they're like his, almost-green and gorgeous. Everybody tells him Mary's beautiful, the perfect combination of Cassie and him, but he'll never know.

He could guess, but he's forgotten what her mother's face looks like. He knows the feel of it, has seen it with fingers made more sensitive by the eternal darkness—but the memory of seeing her, of looking into her dark eyes, that's all fuzzy, lost in the sea of crimson and steel that is all he can remember clearly. He forgot his own reflection years ago. He forgot hers before that.

He didn't ask Cassie to come for him. He never called anyone from the hospital. He laid there in his bed refusing to speak to the doctors, refusing to give them the names of anyone who could come get him, refusing to do anything but lie there and silently mourn.

And if he had, he sure as hell wouldn't have called _her_.

But the day they discharged him, somehow, she was there to pick him up, drive him back to this little town where she now runs the paper, install him in the guest room of the house her mother left her.

She never asked his permission. Somehow she convinced the hospital that she was his half-sister, so that they'd release him to her custody.

He didn't ask for any of it. Until she got pregnant, he kept trying to convince her to let him go, that he had friends he could stay with. She wouldn't hear of it. She knew he was lying.

The incident, as Cassie calls it—not an accident, he knew full well what he was doing—left him blind, left his brain permanently fuzzed with grief and possibly a little bit of damage. He's never learned Braille, though not for lack of trying or tutoring. It's like there's a disconnect in the nerves that won't transmit the right signals. He's learned his way around the house, but any bit of furniture rearranging means months of retraining himself, and he requires a guiding hand to get as far outside as the car.

He seldom leaves the house anymore. Not even to go into the backyard.

He doesn't know why Cassie keeps him—because that's what she does, she _keeps_ him, even concocted a new identity for him to hide from the FBI, and keeps him hidden from the Missouri state police under their very noses. She's never mentioned marriage, not even when she got pregnant.

They're not in love anymore. They hardly even talk, except when Mary's around, and then the conversation is focused on her, not on grown-up matters. On rare nights Cassie slips into his room, into his bed, curls up beside him the way she used to, and talks about her day, about work and the town's gossip and things they used to do and people they used to know. It's as close as they get. They haven't had sex since Mary was born, so she's not keeping him around for that.

Mary makes it livable, bridges the tension between them. If she knows that she's a bastard, if she understands why her father is different, it doesn't bother her. When she comes home from school, she comes straight to his room, where he sits by the window soaking up the afternoon sun, and she crawls into his lap and tells him about her day in such detail that he can almost see it. He dreads the day when she's too big for this ritual, when she wants to go play with her friends and being around her blind father is an embarrassment.

She reminds him so much of her uncle that sometimes it makes his useless eyes tear up. He dreads the day he slips up and tells her that, because she's bright enough to immediately begin asking questions, questions he's not ready to answer. Questions he will never be able to answer.

He's never seen his daughter's eyes.

But every night, lying in his bed, wondering if Cassie is going to visit tonight, he sees his brother. Sees his brother's eyes glowing yellow.

Every night, he stabs the knife into his brother's throat again, is blinded by the acid scarlet spray from the artery.

He'll never see his daughter's eyes.

He'll never be rid of Sammy's.

**_the end_**


End file.
